No matter what, after suffering two devastating setbacks, the Court of Owls and the Dark Owl Priests had been completely wiped out. If one had to say where they lost, it could only be said that they had been defeated by their own Greed and Pride.
Originally, they could have completely sealed away the owl statue in Gotham that stored energy—making the energy inside it unresponsive to the nursery rhyme's summons and permanently abolishing their previous method of influencing children through the rhyme.
But perhaps they had also been thinking, We're already here, we already made it. Since they had gone to such lengths to create so many rules, they might as well leave it there when they moved. If they got lucky, they could keep influencing Gotham. If not, they would not lose anything.
The Dark Owl Priests never could have imagined that someone in Gotham would join forces to steal electricity—and that this alliance would have plans, technology, magic, and brute force alike. In just over a month, they had stolen every bit of energy the priests had accumulated over decades.
Metropolis had failed for the same reason. Once they discovered Gotham's energy was gone, they panicked, believing Metropolis's energy was their lifeline, their only remaining capital. That left them in complete disarray.
Without the resolve to cut their losses, they could be moved around like fish, from left to right and then back again. Schiller had exploited exactly that trait. If the energy was in Gotham while they were in Metropolis, he would drain Gotham's energy, lure them to Gotham, and then turn their Metropolis base upside down. If the situation was reversed, he would do the same thing.
That ensured that whenever they arrived somewhere, they would always be shocked and panicked, unable to organize an